PolyU appointed Cao Liangliang as chair professor of data science and AI effective June 29, 2026, after senior research roles at Google DeepMind, Google, Apple and OPPO, according to PolyU and SCMP. The move matters for practitioners because Cao's production background spans Gemini, Project Astra, Google Cloud Vision, Google Speech and Apple Intelligence, giving PolyU a faculty leader with experience across cloud, on-device and multimodal AI systems. Cao's personal site says he returned to Hong Kong after two decades in the United States, framing the hire as a bridge between MMLab-trained academic research and frontier-model product engineering. The practical signal is not a new model release, but a talent move that can influence applied research, graduate training and industry collaboration in Hong Kong.
Google DeepMind director Cao Liangliang makes a boomerang-return to Hong Kong